Riz Ahmed’s “Hamlet” takes us to modern England, a place with cars and graffiti and a lively Desi community of which the titular Hamlet is a prominent member. It’s an intriguing premise, but while the performances are often riveting, the camera work and lighting often work against the material, with soft-focus and shaky cam at moments that call calm, smoothness and better composition. The script by has deleted and combined some roles that inexplicably make Hamlet seem like a sociopathic loser instead of the overthinking ill-fated future leader.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is about sons and fathers. There are three sons: Hamlet, Laertes and Fortinbras. Hamlet’s father, the king, has died and Hamlet learns through his father’s ghost (also named Hamlet), that his death was actually murder committed by his treacherous brother, Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius. Claudius has quickly married his former sister-in-law, the newly widowed Gertrude. Hamlet distrusts his mother, but his father’s ghost holds her blameless. Hamlet mistakenly kills Laertes’ father, Polonius, thinking the father of his beloved Ophelia, is his uncle, Claudius. After using a play to “prove” his uncle’s guilt, Hamlet decides he will kill his uncle, but his uncle also tries to have Hamlet killed. To that end, Claudius convinces Laertes to join his plot. While Fortinbras doesn’t appear until the end, his presence is felt. Hamlet’s father killed Fortinbras’ father. Thus, Fortinbras is also motivated by avenging his father’s death,  and he, in the end, determines how Hamlet will be honored in death and supposedly claims both Denmark and Norway under his reign.

Screenwriter Michael Lesslie isn’t a stranger to Shakespeare. He was one of three writers on the 2015 Michael Fassbender “Macbeth,” along with Todd Louiso and Jacob Kostoff. The three were nominated for a British Screenwriters’ Award (Outstanding Newcomer for British Feature Film Writing). Lesslie won a 2022 Emmy for Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary (“The Rescue”) that he shared with Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin,  P.J. van Sandwijk , John Battsek  and Anna Barnes. He also collaborated with Adam Cooper and Bill Collage for the 2016 “Assassin’s Creed” and with Michael Arndt and Suzanne Collins for the 2023 “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.”

The problem with this version of “Hamlet,”  begins with the script. Of course to make the usual 90-minute slot for feature films “Hamlet” has to be abridged unless you’re going to let it run a full 242-minutes or (4 hours and 2 minutes, plus an intermission) like the 1996 Kenneth Branaugh all-star interpretation. This 2025 version comes in at 113 minutes or 2 hours and 53 minutes. Fortinbras is deleted although mentioned. Hamlet’s friends–Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are also deleted and that is more problematic.

The film begins with a funeral that may seem foreign to you and me, but the film makes it obvious this is linked to the Hindu beliefs and South Asian culture. In the play, Horatio is seen before Hamlet. He sees the ghost of the late king, Hamlet’s father, when the sentries tell him about it and bring him there to witness the silent ghost. It is Horatio who informs Hamlet of the ghostly visitations. Yet before this, Hamlet asks why Horatio is in Elsinore.

Hamlet: But what is your affair in Elsinore? We’ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.

Horatio: My lord, I came to see your father’s funeral.

Hamlet: I prithee do not mock me, fellow student.
I think it was to see my mother’s wedding.

Horatio: Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.

Hamlet: Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak’d meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!
My father- methinks I see my father.

Horatio:  O, where, my lord?

Hamlet:In my mind’s eye, Horatio.

Horatio: I saw him once. He was a goodly king. 

Hamlet: He was a man, take him for all in all.
I shall not look upon his like again.

Horatio: My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

Hamlet: Saw? who?

Horatio: My lord, the King your father.

Yet in this 2025 film,  the line about coming to see Hamlet’s father’s funeral is delivered by Ophelia (Welsh actress Morfydd Clark) to Hamlet (Riz Ahmed). The initial question about why Ophelia is there makes no sense. Her father, Polonius (Timothy Spall) is there and a close family friend, and wouldn’t Hamlet have invited her there? In the film, Elsinore is a corporation and Hamlet’s father was the CEO.

Hamlet does see his father’s ghost (Asian Indian actor Avijit Dutt) who speaks to him in Hindi. That seems to set up a generational divide, not uncommon among first-generation immigrant families: the parents speak one language and the children answer in the language of the new home country. Yet this isn’t developed as well as it could have been nor is the conflict between the Indian community and Hamlet’s interest in Ophelia. The wedding of Gertrude (Bollywood actress Sheeba Chaddha) and Claudius (Art Malik) is wonderfully sumptuous and the setting for the play with in the play is portrayed by wedding dancers.

The wedding dancers performing the play  is a lovely conceit, but director Aneil Karia fails the fully realize the potential and that’s partially due to the director of photography Stuart Bentley and the set and lighting. We also see that white, the color for the funeral, is also the color for the bride in this wedding.  Yet, by this time, I was already regretting I had not taken Dramamine. The shaky-cam starts early and while there are sections of “Hamlet,” and this screenplay in particular ,where shaky-cam could have been effective to portray the topsy-turvy nature of this familial drama and the jangly emotional state of Hamlet, what makes it ineffective is how often it is used and how inadvertently the shaky-cam appears to be. Closeup quiet scenes are filled with tremors that might have you thinking you’re experiencing an earthquake in the theater (or, in my case, at home). The focus vacillates in and out, with the wrong things, often inanimate objects,  in sharp focus when the face and the eyes of the actors would have been more effective. In this age of social media, we’re very used to seeing handheld videos and that plays against the cinematography choices here.

The performances of Ahmed, Academy Award-winner Malik and Chaddha are riveting although some of the tension is reliant on my understanding of what should happen due to familiarity with the original text. I still have no idea why Polonius was in such a place to be slaughtered or why Hamlet dragged his body around. Why was Laertes  was so easily taken into a scheme we never really seem form? That is, we never see the full wretched, seductive evil within Malik’s Claudius as he brings both Polonius and Laertes–both honorable men, into his plotting. We never see Hamlet as a man as he is seen by his friends. We don’t see his potential that is lost. The famous soliloquy overwhelmed by the action and threat of a violent suicide.

As a dancer, I also don’t feel that Karia and Bentley give us a full appreciation of the wedding dance performance, meaning we don’t get to see what a dancer might wish. Besides having a headache from the shaky-cam, at the end of the film, I wished to see this cast on stage in a full production of a Desi-inspired Hamlet. See this version of “Hamlet” for the performances, but if shaky-cam makes you physically ill, take Dramamine before you go.

“Hamlet” has its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival (30 August 2025) and also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival (5 September 2025).

“Hamlet” received a theatrical release on 6 February 2026 in the UK and on 10 April 2026 in North America.